Blue Cliff Record, Case 34: Yangshan’s No Visit to the Mountain
Yangshan asked a monk, “Where have you come from?”
“Lu Mountain,” replied the monk. “
Did you go to Wulao Peak?” asked Yangshan.
“I didn’t,” answered the monk.
“Then you don’t know about mountains at all,” said Yangshan.
Yunmen commented, “These words were spoken out of benevolence, but the conversation fell into the weeds.”
When I start to riff on a Zen koan that I'm working on with my teacher, I can sense my listener’s eyes glaze over. Don’t worry that is part of meditation too, but perhaps I am jumping the gun. First let’s talk about dreams.
There were certain conversational conventions between student and teacher back in the good old days of Zen a thousand or more years ago in China. The question “Where have you come from?” was a catchall for Who have you worked with? What are you up to? What interests you and how much progress have you been making? If you gave a truly enlightened answer, it might survive a millennia and puzzle future students.
A few days after I began work on this “conversation in the weeds” I woke up very early with a dream fresh in my mind. It was not a nightmare of the terribly frightening order but still unsettling. I had been posed a question that I was expected to answer: What Jesuit theologates should be saved and which put on the chopping block? Apparently as in the dream context, my answer had consequences though part of the anxiety was that I could not put my finger on the reason why.
One thing that the dream made clear is that Jesuits have this conversation about visiting famous monasteries and working with great teachers all the time. I’d almost missed it. When we Jesuits and former Jesuits meet each other, among the “get to know you” questions are “Where did you do your theology? Did you ever work with Father so and so at Alma, or JSTB or Woodstock?” “Our mutual friend Father FX came back from Louvain a changed man, don’t you think? His French sucks but at least you can talk to him.” “ I’m sorry that I had to leave Regis before I was able to finish the series that Lonergan was giving.” (Of course now in the days of jet travel, professional Jesuit schools share their talent. I spent a summer with Lonergan at Boston College in 1968 and didn’t really understand a thing. I was so taxed trying to distinguish his work from the rote scholasticism that was still lingering after Vatican 2, I barely passed the oral exam).
When I applied for theology I chose Woodstock. Just 6 years after the closing of Vatican 2, there was still a mystique about it. More than any other American Jesuit theological institution, it had deeply influenced John 23’s vision. John Courtney Murray had almost single handedly persuaded the assembly to adopt the ground-breaking Declaration on Religious Liberty Dignitatis humanae which he pretty much authored. Gus Weigel died before the Council ended but, for this young Jesuit he was as important as Rahner and several people on the Woodstock faculty had been close to him. I wanted to really understand the backstory of Lumen gentium. Moving to the Upper West Side to join a consortium that included Hebrew Union and Union Theological was very exciting. When Father Minister assigned me to the small community on West 102nd Street where Avery Dulles would be our mentor, I jumped at the chance.
I was only at Mount Woodstock a little more than a year before the Sirens of New Age theology called me to Holy Hill, JSTB, Bob Ochs, Claudio Naranjo, Master CM Chen, Tarthang Tulku and the Nyingma Institute. The work was obviously very different from Woodstock. Far more introspective. By the end of that year, I’d sat a long retreat with Dhiravamsa and studied Luke’s Gospel narrative with John McKenzie. If I were a name-dropping monk, I'd hit the jackpot.
But Yangshan and Yunmen won’t let me get away with it. What drags this conversation out of the weeds and fills it with compassion? I will go back to the meditation hall once again.
